But Even So
by Bishop.AG
Summary: What do you do when you're recruited into Londo Bell, but your best friend is a Neo-Zeon ace? MSGUC retool.


**0096 Universal Century**

**Industrial 7**

* * *

"All hands! This is your captain speaking."

Lieutenant Terra Ivy popped the seal on her helmet, filling her lungs with the sterile chill of the hangar. It had been silent since ensign Marcenas had nodded off two hours before - she almost _wanted_ to hear another of Captain Midas's droning speeches. Plus, it made a good excuse to wake the rookie.

"Wakey wakey, ensign sleepyhead."

"Huh? Wha-" There was a sudden 'thump' that told her Riddhe had been sleeping on the cockpit floor again. "Uugh..."

"Captain's speaking."

Midas made a point of clearing his throat, and it almost seemed that the balding, middle aged officer was standing with the two pilots as he continued. "... I understand your weariness. We've been chasing this freighter for two weeks now. Two, sleepless, overcrowded weeks. We're low on supplies. Our replacements are in dire need of further training. But the Neo Zeon encroach upon civilian colonies, and as a special forces unit it is our responsibility to do what others cannot."

"Uhoh. You hear that, rookie?"

"What?"

"We're invading a civilian colony."

"He didn't say that, did he?"

The lieutenant shook her head. "He's going to. Start the fires." She had been in Londo Bell since it's inception three years prior; it had been long enough for her to recognize a superior buttering up his men for a nasty task. Londo Bell had been the only unit with the balls to try to push back an asteroid three years before.

Aside from the 88th. Late-comers didn't count.

She felt the reactor power on, shaking blood back into her cramping thighs. The main hatch fell back into place, it's seam in the monitors disappearing. Terra had a great view within the spherical cockpit, but it was like being seated within a snowglobe - dazzling until she ran out of things to do. She had gotten used to the sensation long ago, but it didn't mean she liked it at all.

Terra had to get used to a multitude of things, like alert five status. It entailed sitting in a small room for hours, both anticipating and dreading the call for a rapid launch with a fully-loaded mobile suit. They had launched on so many false alarms that Terra and Riddhe had opted to sleep in their cockpits. As their machines taxied to the catapults, she hoped it would be their last launch of the day.

Terra could see a mirror-image of her own machine to her left piloted by the young ensign. The RGZ-95 was new, unproven in combat. She loved it. Known as the 'ReZEL,' the blue-and-white machine looked fast even standing still. A gently pointed booster unit trailed from nose to tail, looking much like the cockpit of a fighter plane and set opposite a fast-firing beam gun. Sensors protected by armor plate jutted forward like barbs, and massive rocket engines took up most of the rear. Riddhe's machine carried a bulky mega-beam launcher, Terra's a slender beam rifle.

"... Fighting in a colony cylinder is difficult, but it is what we have trained to do! We must strive to minimize civilian casualties, for our enemies will freely use them as human shields. What trials lay ahead will require your absolute focus and I expect the best from every single one of you. That is all." Alarms blared all around the _Nahel Argama_ and crewmen streamed into the hangar to start the myriad inspections necessary for a combat launch.

She shook her head. Just three years before, the newly-created Londo Bell unit had fought Char Aznable's Neo Zeon. She and a handful of others were the only veteran pilots to survive the conflict - even the legendary Amuro Ray had gone missing. She knew her Londo Bell was modernized and larger than ever before, but it paled in comparison to its glory days.

Terra made a final visual inspection as tethered flight crew did the same. The wings twitched when she pulled at the controls in tandem with puffs from the vernier motors. Voices erupted over the speakers all at once.

"Full range of motion for main engine gimbals."

"Mechanical safeties removed on main weapons."

"Verniers nominal, no stoppages."

"AMBAC is nominal."

"Sensors look good!"

"This is flight. Romeo nine, you are approved for launch."

Terra threw her crew a crisp salute.

The floor beneath her blue mobile suit shuddered, pushing her 'upward' - they were technically upside-down, but in zero gee orientation hardly meant much. Rushed as they were, the navigational data was only uploaded into her suit when she had been placed on the catapult. "It's a Sleeve freighter we're engaging, and a quad-wing mobile suit." She had thought the name strange, but 'Sleeve' had stuck with the majority of the pilots due to the ornate markings on Neo-Zeon mobiles suits. "Industrial 7? Isn't that where Chrys is?"

"The newbie?" Riddhe scoffed. "I'm sure she'll be fine."

Terra snorted. The rich kid calling the hardest-working pilot on the ship a newbie was laughable. Chrys was young, yes, younger than anyone else on the Argama, and the newest recruit. Terra resented that she was an intern of Anaheim Electronics, the conglomerate that felt it necessary to meddle with the military. Despite that, she had earned her place in the unit as much as the troublemaker ensign.

Terra also knew that there was trouble in paradise between the two, but it was none of her business. She looked to her left, expecting to see the flashing lights indicating Riddhe was about to launch. There were none, and the massive blast shields were still in place."You're still a rookie, even if you are the Prime Minister's kid. Why aren't you on the catapult, eh?"

"I-uh... I didn't pass inspection so there might be a delay. My balancer is off... and hey! I've been in the unit for two years now!"

"You mean you've been an ensign for a two years. A man twenty-two years old in wartime should be pulling in junior-grade commission or better," she said cooly. Terra flicked a large switch on the console. Up in the control center overlooking the hangar, a green light would come on beside her callsign. She could see the armored 'bubble' where catapult technicians were ready to shoot her into space. They flashed her a thumbs-up. She saluted. "Terra Ivy, Romeo nine, ready to launch."

She was shoved into her seat as the ReZEL hurtled along the catapult, reaching a cruising speed in slightly less than a second. If Riddhe was still sleepy - assuming he launched at all, a combat launch would shake him awake in no time at all. Terra threw her ReZEL into a right roll, before banking a kilometer from her home vessel. She did it automatically, making sure their suits didn't slam into one another lingering around the catapults.

Terra had grown up on Earth, and the absence of sensation in space was something she had never gotten used to. Unless she was accelerating, the sensation of moving at all would be hard to notice. Shutting off the engines gave the impression she was just floating, even if her ReZEL was hurtling through space at combat speed.

Riddhe took to the air five minutes after Terra, leaving her the first pilot to arrive on the scene. Industrial 7 was like most colony cylinders, being an enormous tube with habitation along the inside of its surface. Engines and solar arrays were installed on one end, while the other was capped with a snail-like colony builder. Being a 'closed type' it had no windows, instead relying on an artificial sun in the center.

But where were the Sleeves? Terra's eyes darted around. She shifted in her seat. Something aside from simply being alone perturbed her, but she couldn't figure out what it was. "Spitfire to bridge. Anything from ECOAS?"

"A burst message from ten minutes ago says the Sleeve vessel should be in the no-inspection hangar proximate to the colony builder."

"Ah... I'm right in front of it. Wish me luck." Terra had been simply unnerved before. Finding the bay doors for the hangar _unlocked_ didn't help. She wasn't one for being stabbed, so the pilot activated her ReZEL's transformation mechanism. For all the benefits of a sleek 'waverider' format, a humanoid form was still the best way to survive a hand-to-hand battle. She watched limbs erupt from the machine, hoping it wasn't the perfect moment for a Sleeve to take her by surprise. The attack never came, so she gingerly levered open the enormous bay door with the same caution she'd give an atomic bomb.

It wouldn't have been the first time the Sleeves left nuclear weapons as traps.

"Uh. Spitfire to bridge, we have a problem."

"Go ahead, Spitfire."

"There's nobody here." Terra looked over rows and rows of empty spaces. Her sensors caught residual heat from a hurried launch, marked by a scorchmark on the wall. She sighed. "Guess they caught on. Do we pursue into the colony? Hold on-" Heat. A lot of it. Terra kicked on the main engine, spiraling through open racks and cranes in pursuit of the rapidly fading signature.

She nearly ran head-long into an green monstrosity. It had arms like clubs, a barrel-chest bristling with weapons and quartet of binders each half the size of her ReZEL, covered with rocket nozzles and barrels for energy weapons. The lieutenant knew even before she set eyes on the silver crest that it was a Neo-Zeon. "Bridge, I've found the enemy quad-wing. Engaging!" Terra didn't waver. She aimed right for the cockpit and pressed the trigger.

A brilliant beam lanced into the machine, splattering harmlessly across the binder that came to protect it like the outermost layer of a cocoon. She expected the machine to capitalize on her weakness, spin and cleave her in half. Instead the cockpit opened, releasing a person into the hangar before the enormous machine kicked away, spiraling into the depths of the hangar bay.

"What the heck..." Terra saw the suited figure gesticulate wildly. When she saw a bright orange crest on their helmet, Terra felt a huge sigh escape unbidden. "Oh boy. Bridge, I found Chrys."

"Acknowledged. RTB, reinforcements are en route. How copy?"

"... Copy all." Terra sat as Chrys knocked on the cockpit door. She had never trusted Anaheim's people. Not back during the Axis drop, and certainly not now.

"Hey! Let me in!"

"What's that? I think my communications are acting up, I can't hear you." Terra spun the ReZEL around, not paying any heed to how Chrys nearly tumbled from the machine's hand. She threw a salute to the green-colored Jegans and ReZELs like her own that went past in formation. Terra wasn't an angry person, but she found it difficult not to chuck Chrys into space to be rescued later.

"C'mon, aren't you my friend?"

Terra shrugged. "I don't know."

"Look, I'll explain... can you please let me in?"

"Nope. But do explain. _Spy._"


End file.
